Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Tragedies seem to be a wonderful time for the religious right to spout their propaganda.

While Phelps may be the one making headlines for his vitrolic comments, he's far from the only one. Others like Brother Jed, Pat Robertson, and the rest of their ilk aren't far behind the Phelps family.

The Virginia Tech shootings have brought out another round of idiocy from them.

PZ Myers has already seen pundit Debbie Schlussel blaming Muslims. As soon as it was revealed that the shooter was Asian, she attempted to use that to reenforce her xenophobia.

Brother Jed was on campus again yesterday with a flock of his followers. One of them claimed that the students that died, did so because they didn't believe in Jesus. As if belief could stop the bullets.

And, seriously, holy fitfuck batman, when I semi-jokingly mentioned over on Memoirs of a Skepchick that the Phelps's would find something in this to support their agenda, it didn't cross my mind that they would stoop this low. Clearly I didn't have my evil-cap on.

Made it! [Actually emailed my son in Vegas and he told me how.] It turns out that I'm a member of the 'silent majority. I've decided I shouldn't remain silent. I've a couple of things to say now [take a deep breath this will take a while]:

First, you kids ought not to criticize what you don't understand. No, Ed's follower didn't believe Jesus made you bulletproof. [You know better, right? An example of atheist sophistry -- like Jon presenting 'PZ's posted .. graphic' {3/25, "Evolution =/= Cosmology" posting} which was supposed to show '... evolution and cosmology are about as far apart as you can get!' when, if you viewed the large scale diagram, neither was labeled thereupon.] Just so your readers will understand the truth, what that young person believed was that, if you believe in Jesus, Jesus guides your every step [a belief quite common among Fundamentalists, but not among mainstream Christians, ie., 'the silent majority'] and, therefore, had one of the victims believed in Jesus, he/she wouldn't have become a victim because Jesus would have guided that person elsewhere so that that person would not have been in that classroom and would not have become a victim. [How long will it be before someone who was absent from said classroom will come forth and thank God for saving his/her life?] Clear now? Just because Fundamentalists have idiot beliefs, that doesn't mean they're idiots, right? They don't live in a world without logic, Jay, but their logical assumptions differ from yours. Your lack of logic was demonstrated by your failure to research their beliefs before you commented. Just as Jon did.

Second, I've broken my silence because, I've recently done much web perusal. Mostly, I've really appreciated the advances in science the last 50 years and the current acceptance of the Big Bang by science [and all rational folk -- yes, that means Fundamentalists, although logical, aren't rational] [ditto evolution -- my first degree was in Geology, U of W {Seattle} Phi Beta Kappa]. Of course, when I was getting my BS, the Big Bang was not accepted by science. The universe was believed to be 'eternal,, immutable and unchanging' -- a position which had been held by science for, at that time, more or less, 200 years. Most scientists were atheists. [The exceptions were mostly geologists -- none that I knew were atheists. We had observed that the earth's lifespan was finite; therefore, {logicians fill in the blanks}, the universe could not be infinite.] But despite all of my recent perusals [including about 100 Big Bang sites], I didn't find what i was looking for.

What didn't I find? A Big Bang cosmology that actually began with God's act of creation. [I knew when science accepted the Big Bang, the existence of God was proven, i.e., the existence of God was proven within my lifetime. I wanted to see how science recognized that fact.] Instead all we had was the lambda CDM model [from the atheists] which, amazingly,, all theists accepted. They were happy that science had finally accepted the obsolete theist view that the universe was created from nothing- see my weblog which corrects that ancient, erroneous belief: http://bigbang4god.wordpress.comSo I decided to enter the arena, hence my weblog. It will put forth a Big Bang cosmology beginning with the act of creation. I visit your site, first, to level the playing field, and, second, because I see theists view it also. I invite them to my weblog. [Atheists can view it too, of course, but they won't like it when I call them, justifiably, 'welchers'.]

One last thing: Jon, I've viewed your profile an I couldn't find when you were in that foxhole [4/7, '$15!?' posting]. Please give us the details.

I do understand the position of Jed and his followers. While I'm sure that they didn't believe that belief can stop bullets, that wasn't the point of the post. Rather, it was to highlight how ignorant and callous their remarks were, regardless of the explanation. Your "explanation" is just as ignorant. So Jesus doesn't stop bullets. He just makes you dodge them. Sounds like you've watched the Matrix a few too many times.

You ask how long it will be until someone that was absent thanks God for sparing them, yet you refuse to consider how many killed were Christians that did believe in Jesus. Unfortunately, we can't ask them, but speaking statistically, 90% of Americans are Christian, so it's a fair bet that most of those killed were as well. Shame Jesus didn't decide to guide their steps out of the classrooms.

If you don't like that most discussions of the Big Bang don't involve God, well, perhaps you need to revisit your degree program and realize that science, by definition, cannot confirm the supernatural since we cannot test it. However, you should be pleased to know that I have explicitly noted that it cannot rule it out either.

Lastly, you should also work on your reading. I've never claimed I've been in any foxholes.

This paragraph continues to show that you think I'm one of them! I don't agree with them, Jon, I just wanted to make their position clear. You don't recognize that their argument is circular. They believe that if you TRULY believe in Jesus, he will keep you away from harm. If you get killed, ipso facto, you didn't TRULY believe! Isn't that awful? Of course, but that's what they believe. [You see, Fundamentalists believe that, of all Christians, only they are on the road to salvation. The folk that you and I accept as Christians, they don't. They see them as hypocrites. They're not callous -- they're convinced! LOL

I'm well aware that the reasoning is flawed. It's so obvious, that I don't even bother addressing it directly. It's merely fodder for mockery, hence the tongue in cheek comparisons to being bullet proof or playing Neo.

Perhaps you need to go back and look over the first post in this blog which explicitly states that I tend towards sarcasm.